Unity State in the Greater Upper Nile region of South Sudan has seen four consecutive years of flooding. These annual disasters have come on top of a decade of ongoing conflict. Because of these things, many people have been forced to leave their homes, villages and, crucially for children, their schools.
For most people who’ve had to move, the closest place of relative safety is in Rubkona County, particularly within the more developed area of the town. But things are very difficult for this displaced population.
Amongst other challenges, they’ve struggled to access clean, safe water. This makes all of life difficult and harder for schools to function.
For drinking water, the community has been depending on stagnant rainwater and water from the nearby Nam River, but none of it is safe to drink, which causes many people to become ill.
‘We just collect water from available sources. It’s not clean, it’s not even treated, and it makes us sick, but we have no choice,’ explains one resident of Rubkona Town.
Rehabilitating boreholes to bring students back into classrooms
To help improve the situation, Tearfund has been implementing a water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programme in the area which includes:
- rehabilitation of handpumps to give people access to clean water;
- maintaining the water points;
- activities in schools that promote safe hygiene practices;
- testing of water quality to ensure it’s safe for consumption;
- distributing dignity kits (containing feminine hygiene products) and training teenage girls to make reusable sanitary pads;
- constructing flood-resilient waste management pits and temporary latrines for proper disposal of human waste.
Before the Tearfund WASH team started work on the handpumps, they also researched how to make them more resilient to flooding and determined that boreholes that have an elevated pedestal (where people stand to get the water) are better options for flood-prone regions such as Unity State.
After the assessment, Tearfund, in collaboration with the State Water Department, rehabilitated ten boreholes in the Rubkona and Budang Payam areas and also four more boreholes were rehabilitated with elevated pedestals to protect them against flood waters. They are currently working on another ten, which will bring the total to 24 rehabilitated boreholes providing easy access to clean, safe water to the community.
This has had a huge positive impact on schools.